Late Night Thoughts...

Have you ever done as Descartes did and imagined, if just for a moment, that your hand was not yours? I tried it the other day in class and for a few seconds was able, I think, to capture that feeling he had. It’s rather weird to be honest. Think about it. What if you were simply a consciousness that either resided in the body you are currently in or had made it up completely, including everything around you. The brain is capable of having hallucinations, so why couldn’t everything around you be one. You start to feel that the conscious, thinking part of you is separate from the physical part of you. Anyways, I just thought that it was cool and really interesting if you can experience that feeling, even if only for a few seconds.

One thing I thought about during the reading is how like and yet unlike every human being Descartes is. He is just like the rest of us, I think, in that he too is searching for that one irrefutable truth that will become his springboard for life. It will be the truth upon which he builds his life, something that he can stand firm on when trouble comes. Everyone wants something that they can fall back on; something they can trust will never fail or be false. People are looking for it every day and some find it, some don’t. Not everyone knows what they are looking for, where to look for it, or even that they are looking for it. Descartes is unlike the rest of us in that he is willing to throw into doubt absolutely everything that he knows and thinks he knows. Not many could ever successfully do that, nor would many be willing to do so, I suspect, for fear that they would get lost in the doubt and never climb back out again. I wonder if he knew the answer all along…

-Anna

P.S. I commented on Susan Berner